Chapter Text
You’re still reeling from everything that had happened at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, even days after the fact.
You don’t even know why you’d been transferred there for treatment in the first place, but that didn’t matter now. That place was gone—you’d only survived because of the director and overseer of your ‘treatment’, Dr. Gideon, bringing you to some secret room filled with dozens of active monitors and giving you one simple instruction:
Wait exactly thirty minutes before escaping through the hidden passage in his secret office. Taking even one full minute before doing so would permanently lock you into the facility, where you would die with the other patients.
You did as instructed, even when that meant that you had to crawl on all fours in order to do so.
You’d also found the box with the belongings they took from you when they admitted you while snooping around his office as you waited for the timer he left behind to go off. You didn’t know what your things were doing in there, but you were glad that you didn’t lose anything when the building exploded later. By then you’d escaped and run to the closest police department.
Which, by the way, you had no idea where to find since you’d never been anywhere other than the Care Center during your stay in this particular city. You’d been locked in the back of a windowless ambulance when they transported you there, so you were immediately lost once you got out onto the street a full two blocks away from the Care Center.
But that seemed ages ago.
Since then, you’d been poked and prodded, interrogated, and set up in a hotel room with bodyguards.
But you weren’t alone, at least; and not because of the bodyguards stationed outside of your room.
You’d found something else in that room Dr. Gideon had left you in...
You didn’t know what kind of python you took from the Care Center, but she (you weren’t sure of the gender, actually) was almost eight feet of pure muscle and cool, iridescent scales that could only show their true beauty in natural sunlight.
Whoever was paying for your hotel room had been kind enough to get a decently-sized enclosure set up in there for the snake you refused to part with. You were glad, too, because you’d never taken care of a snake before.
Not one of this monstrous size, anyway.
You’d had a little albino corn snake for a week when you were younger, but you ended up taking it back to the exotic pet store because you didn’t have the heart to feed it live food when it refused thawed pinkies.
Unfortunately, you were pretty sure that you might have to feed this snake live food at some point. She—you were just going to keep calling the snake ‘she’ until you could find someone who knew how to safely gender snakes—hadn’t eaten anything yet. One of the body guards noted that she was in really good condition as they were putting together the enclosure, and he said it looked like she’d eaten recently.
You loved snakes, but only then began to realize that you were pitifully under-educated about them now that you found yourself taking care of one.
She hadn’t been in an enclosure when you found her. She legit was just slithering along the floor like she owned the place.
Had scared the crap out of you initially, actually.
But all this had brought you to the present moment: laying on your hotel bed with a massive python lazily curled around your calves as you idly watched the news.
According to said news, it had only been three days since everything went to hell.
It seemed like longer to you, but you’d been drug all over said hell and back in the past three days. Police, doctors, FBI agents…
The thought of it all made you grimace.
You’d been allowed to call your family and best friend to let them know that you were alive and safe, but you were told that you wouldn’t be able to go back home until they had gotten the paperwork and testing all cleared up. That could take months.
Until then, you were stuck here, with only a drowsy python and a flat screen television to keep you company.
It was late, a light drizzle taking over the city’s sleeping night as you lay awake with the news on as only background noise at this point.
Insomnia was normal for you, though it seemed to have gotten worse since you started being treated by Dr. Gideon.
He never explained what he was trying to treat, be it your various mental or physical ailments.
All you knew was that there was a new ‘treatment’ every couple of weeks, a new shot or blood panel work-up no matter what time of day or night it was. You swore the man never slept, and his appearance…
He looked strange from the moment you’d met him during your initial intake what must have been over a year ago now.
They’d taken your jewelry and your clothes at that point, leaving you in a flimsy white gown that barely reached your knees when Dr. Gideon made his appearance.
How he towered over everyone around him was the first thing you noticed, followed quickly by how your eyes were drawn to his pallid and practically gray skin as a scar that started at his bottom lip caught your attention.
That same scar trailed down his chin and throat, disappearing beneath the neat tie holding his dark gray dress shirt together at the top.
Then there were his eyes—glowing irises and sclera that looked stained with dark, unhealthy tissue. You hadn’t gotten a good look at them thanks to how the fluorescent lights of the examination room danced shadows along his sharp features, and the fact you could never maintain eye contact with people for long anyway.
As if Dr. Gideon’s unnatural appearance hadn’t been enough to set off your flight or fight instincts, the way he examined you most certainly was.
He talked softly, as if making notes of your condition, while his thick fingers would graze the vulnerable skin the gown left visible to his attentive gaze. You couldn’t hide how each touch made you shiver and erupt in goosebumps as you practically fawned instead of your usual fight mode and froze, just waiting for the exam to be over with.
You could still remember how his fingertips grazing the back of your neck made you gasp, your cheeks flushing with clear embarrassment as your new doctor paused a moment before chuckling to himself and continuing his physical exam.
How he looked the last time you saw him seemed like a stark contrast from his usual work attire.
Dr. Gideon was dressed completely differently, wearing some strange sort of contraption over his eyes. Somehow, that made you feel even more uneasy than if he wasn’t wearing it.
His skin had only gotten more gray and disfigured over the time he’d been treating you, so you probably weren’t as freaked out as a normal person would have been when he appeared seemingly out of nowhere, which he’d done hundreds of times during your stay there.
That didn’t stop him from literally manhandling you when he found you about to be bitten by another patient that had seemed to lose her mind and attack you.
You’d never been carried over someone’s shoulder like you weighed absolutely nothing before, what with being on the heavier side of things for your smaller size. Sure enough, though, Dr. Gideon had hauled you up with only one hand like you were but a child’s toy.
You shiver at the memory of his large hand splayed across your lower back, keeping you firmly in place.
These feelings...you didn’t quite like them.
You definitely had some sort of fascination with Dr. Gideon that had developed during your time with him. He wasn’t normal, that was sure, but something about him both drew you in, yet repulsed you all at the same time.
No one had ever made you feel such things before.
Even now, just thinking back on things, you could feel your stomach both flutter and then tighten in some sort of unknown dread. You suspected it was some kind of primal instinct, as Dr. Gideon most definitely gave off the vibes one expected of a predator animal.
There’s a sudden sound outside of your hotel room that brings you out of your memories. It suspiciously sounds like a heavy body hitting the floor, and it’s followed by a second, definite thud.
You’re quick to scramble out of the bed, leaving your lazy serpentine friend at the foot of said bed as you reach underneath your pillow to grab the knife one of your bodyguards had given you to help you feel safer when alone.
You don’t dare call out, listening closely to determine if something was coming for you as you quietly unsheathe the knife in your hands.
You can hear uncharacteristically heavy bootsteps.
Slow.
Methodical.
Only one person you knew walked like that, and fresh dread mingled with some bizarre form of misplaced hope coiled deep within your stomach.
Silence falls before you hear the electric lock on the door click as it unlocks. You don’t realize that you begin holding your breath at that point, grip tightening on your only weapon.
The long handle pushes down once the lock pulls back, the door easing open as if whoever was on the other side wasn’t in any hurry to get to you.
Your grip on the handle of the knife is turning white, hand beginning to quiver from how tight you’re holding it.
You don’t think to run into the bathroom and hide, entirely prepared to fight off whoever was coming for you.
The door finally finishes opening, a tall figure ducking slightly to get inside, and you damn near drop your knife at who you see.
It is Dr. Gideon, but he looks...different.
His snakeskin trench coat is gone, as is the vest he wore under it. All he’s in are the tattered remains of his pants and boots that had been put on but not laced up.
He’s also missing most of one arm and there’s blood spattered across that side of his face.
The mask with all the lenses you’d seen him wearing when he’d saved you back at the Care Center isn’t anywhere to be seen either.
You honestly aren’t sure how to react, not even realizing that your grip on your knife involuntarily loosens and you’ve begun breathing again. That is, at least, until his unnatural gaze locks with yours.
You’re quite shocked that he’s still up and moving around while missing his left arm. Wasn’t there an artery in the arms? How was he not bleeding out on the carpet right now?
“There you are,” The strange doctor says in his usual smooth and mockingly tender voice, thought there is a strange inhuman growl reverberating with his words. The sound makes you jump slightly. He sees you jolt and purses his lips as he tilts his head, still smiling like he was watching a child playing cops and robbers. “You must have been through quite a lot, my dear.”
You still felt like you were going through ‘quite a lot’, which he seems to detect in your demeanor as he steps further into the room and lets the hotel door close slowly behind him.
A part of you contemplated making a run for it before the door closed entirely, but you glance over your shoulder to the poor python that would have been left behind if you did that. You don’t know if your serpentine friend would care about being abandoned, but you couldn’t just leave the snake behind.
The doctor’s gaze follows your own and his brows arch in mild surprise as he sees the snake that has noticed him as well and lift her head to begin tasting the air with her tongue.
“You always did have a tendency to take things that didn’t belong to you,” Dr. Gideon chuckles as he begins a steady approach. You entire being tenses and you hold the knife up, but he merely brushes past you to reach out for the snake with his one remaining hand. “As this will make things easier for me, I suppose that I can forgive you for taking my snake,” He speaks while not looking at you, making a soft cooing sound as he cups the python’s large head affectionately. “There’s my big girl. Did you miss me?”
You’re left unsure of what to do again, only able to step away from the bed and put some distance between you and the towering doctor as you lower your knife but don’t put it away.
So the snake was originally his...not a big surprise, given where you found her. And hey, you were right about the snake being female!
You aren’t expecting to see Dr. Gideon suddenly take firm hold of his snake’s head and bring her struggling body up to his. The python is panicked and he forces her to bite him on what’s left of his missing arm with a mild grunt of what could have been annoyance.
It leaves you speechless, but he hasn’t injured his snake as he tenderly sets her back down on the bed and lets her slither away from him before he turns toward you and grins.
“Now then,” The doctor begins, gold teeth glimmering dully in the light of the bedside lamp as his eyes bore into you. You can only look at them for a second before you’re back to looking between his cheek and mouth, only for your startled gaze to widen when you see the skin around the bleeding snake bite on the remaining stump of his missing arm writhe.
It’s only for a brief moment, but it’s more than enough to cause fresh dread to coil deep within your gut. Your fascination wasn’t entirely gone, but instinctual fear made it hard to be in awe right now.
The dark chuckle that rasps past his scarred and cracked lips makes your skin erupt into goosebumps with a shudder. You notice his voice sounds more...human now, the growling rasp mingling with each vowel and consonance to rumble in his throat now gone.
You knew Dr. Gideon wasn’t normal the moment you met him a year ago, but seeing him like this was…
“Frightened?” He asks despite already knowing the answer. He sounds like he did before, back at the Care Clinic.
Dr. Gideon seems to relish in your renewed fear as he stands his full height and moves towards you with that familiar long, slow, methodical stride of his. You can’t help but take a few steps backwards until your back hits the wall beside the bedside table.
Your eyes dart to the door, wondering if you’d be quick enough to outrun him and escape. He doesn’t give you the time as he grabs your right hand and uses it to wrench your arm forward.
His hand so easily engulfs yours, hardening grip forcing you to drop the knife you were still holding up until that point.
“Did they draw any blood?” Dr. Gideon’s voice is firmer now as his sharp gaze hones in on the bruise where you’d last had a needle in one of your veins. He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge you when you hesitantly nod, hoping answering him will keep you in one piece. Rather, he clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth as his massive hand slides up your arm in order for him to rub his thumb thoughtfully over the previously abused flesh. He talks to himself as he does, muttering: “Mn. It doesn’t matter in the end, really. They won’t find anything unless they know where to look.”
“Dr. Gideon…?” You chance calling his name, voice soft and uneasy as you do your best not to upset him. You’d seen just what those hands could do to a person and would rather not be choked unconscious, or worse.
“Oh, come now,” He chastises with a knowing smile, uttering your name in a way that makes you tense up further as his scarred hand slides up your bare arm before he cups your face and forces you to look right up into his eyes. You know he can see your fear, your breath quickening despite you doing your best to hide it, but it only makes him smile wider. “Are we not past formalities at this point? You may call me Victor.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
You keep your mouth firmly shut, trying your best to keep your breathing under control as you go back to staring at his mouth.
Dr. Gideon—Victor—lets his smile fall away as he shifts his hand to brush the hair from your round face with the backs of his fingers almost affectionately. He’s clearly contemplating something, and a part of you prays that you never find out what.
Unfortunately for you, that hand that was being so gentle with you one moment tears your baggy tank top open before clamping viciously around your throat in the next.
You can only yelp out and claw at his wrist, kicking out while Victor lifts you from your feet with ease.
“I was going to tell you that I wasn’t going to harm you, but I am afraid that I must; if only for a moment,” Victor tells you in a tone that sounds more regretful than he actually looks as he slides you up the wall until you’re at perfect face level with him at his full height. “It would be different if I still had some of my facilities, but as I do not, I will simply have to get your blood the hard way, my dear.” His hand tightens around your thick neck with ease, cutting your breathing off enough that you can’t do much more than groan and wheeze. “Shh...it will be over soon enough.”
You aren’t sure what to expect from him, far more concerned with being choked to death rather than the fact you now had one breast hanging out from the remnants of your torn sleep shirt, but you most certainly don’t expect Victor to step in close, dip his head forward, and bite you.
He clamps on just below your clavicle, a spot previously covered by your tank top, but you’re unable to release a full scream thanks to the hand still firmly around your throat as pain blossoms hot beneath the uneven teeth that just keep cutting into your vulnerable flesh without mercy.
You don’t know if it’s blood or saliva that runs down your chest as the pain from that bite only seems to grow.
Victor isn’t even bothered by your feet hitting his solid stomach. It feels like you’re kicking a fucking brick wall.
His mouth feels cooler than it should be, especially as he holds it against your now burning flesh, and you are barely able to whimper with relief when he finally dislodges his jagged teeth from your skin.
But Victor doesn’t stop there.
No, from there he sucks at the fresh wound he made.
The coarse texture of his scarred lips are rough against your abused skin; a stark contrast to the smooth (forked?) tongue he lavs over the wound with a deep, pleased hum. Your body erupts with goosebumps once more as that tongue travels lower to collect the blood that had escaped down the valley of your breasts and coated the realistic snake pendant resting there.
Victor chuckles to himself as his tongue wraps around your necklace, licking away any traces of your blood before he pulls back enough to stare at where his bite mark now marred your skin. He’s looking far too insufferably smug now, even through the traces of tears wetting your lashes.
“Ahh, it seems I wasn’t the only one who took some pleasure in these turn of events,” Victor says, grip on your throat loosening just enough to allow you to breath more while he keeps you firmly in place. You aren’t sure what he means until you notice him staring at the bare half of your chest, and your already flushed face grows even hotter as you realize your nipples had gotten hard when you broke out into goosebumps a moment earlier and where still hard.
You brain ticks out of fawn in that moment, flaring right into fight as you start to kick at the doctor harder than before, fingers digging into his wrist hard enough to draw some of his blood.
This only causes Victor to tighten his grasp around your throat once more, the tightest it’s been before this point, and this gets you to stop fighting and go back to doing your best to get him to just drop you.
“Now now,” He tuts and squeezes even harder, thumb caressing your carotid artery in warning as he watches as you dance dangerously close to unconsciousness, “No need to get all huffy. It’s a perfectly natural reaction to physical stimulation.”
You still somehow manage to glare despite the darkness blurring the edges of your vision, baring your teeth and hissing in your anger. This only serves to amuse him as he begins to rhythmically squeeze and release your throat as he waits for the lack of oxygen to settle you down to a manageable degree.
As he does this, he glances to where he still lacks his left arm.
Something about it causes him to frown, and he mutters something about needing more blood under his breath before you find his teeth at your bare skin once more.
He’s back to biting you again, this time in a few inches further down your chest; above the swell of your exposed breast. Something about this bite seems personal, Victor pressing in close to you as if his massive form crushing you back into the wall will somehow squeeze more blood out of you.
You’re entire body is trembling, vision dark at the edges as you gasp for air and your mind swims with the sensation of a lack of proper oxygen and the renewed throb of pain in your chest.
You barely even register the fact you release a moan at some point.
Victor does, though, and you feel his grip loosen around your throat after he pauses all motion for a fraction of a second.
You feel dizzy as you gasp for much-needed air, a second moan croaking past your parted lips when you feel his wicked, chilled tongue slither down your exposed breast to lick up any traces of blood that had escaped his questing mouth.
You don’t know why your body is reacting this way, heat shooting down your spine and settling deep within your core to throb traitorously.
Victor pulls back to look at your flushed face once more, watching your perked breasts as your chest heaves in a desperate attempt to fill your lungs.
Even through your blurred vision, you can see his smug expression. He is clearly proud of himself, while you feel ashamed from your body’s excited reaction. No one had made you feel like this before, and it made you want to crawl into a hole and die.
You aren’t given time to think about this much longer as Victor grunts and rolls his head from one side to the other, baring his misaligned teeth when the skin around the exposed end of his missing arm begins to writhe and bulge.
Right before your very eyes you see bone and sinew start to rapidly form where his arm had previously been torn away, but only for a moment.
Victor drops you unceremoniously to the floor, leaving you gasping and coughing as you hold your hand to your bruising throat. You can hear him making sounds of discomfort somewhere above you, but your body is more concerned about getting all of the air it can now that you weren’t on the brink of being choked half to death.
By the time you’ve stopped coughing and have lift your head, Victor is already looking at a completely formed left arm covered in traces of something slimy and tinged red.
He’s turning his reformed limb over, flexing his hand and bending his arm at the elbow as he does so.
“Ah, much better,” Victor exclaims before he turns back towards you.
A dull glint nearby brings your attention to the knife he’d made you drop, less than a foot away, but any hopes of grabbing it to defend yourself from any more of his strange onslaughts is dashed the moment he kicks out and sends it skittering out of sight beneath the bed.
All this leaves you to do is cover your chest and weakly glare up at Victor. You can still feel your body throbbing in need between your legs, doing your best to hide it as you and the doctor quietly study one another.
You’re also doing your best to ignore the fact that he seems suspiciously firm in his pants. Not fully erect, but still showing interest in the way your body reacted to his assault. Perhaps the view of your flushed areola and pert nipple had caused him to stand at half mast.
He seemed a little too proportionate, though you make a point not to stare at his crotch.
You didn’t want to invite any more unwanted attention now that you knew how your body reacted to being bitten and licked while also being choked.
“Now what to do with you, hm?” Victor lets that singular question hang heavy in the air, face splitting into that unnerving grin of his as you keep yourself curled and covered against the wall like a cornered animal. You most certainly felt like one right now.
So you wait quietly, though not for long. Not even for a full minute.
Victor’s smile falls away without warning before he lunges forward, his newly formed hand clamping around your throat with purpose.
“Shhh...” He hushes you gently, as if he wasn’t choking you with the intent to knock you out, and all you can do is kick and claw pathetically until unconsciousness finally claims you.
Victor’s hand releases your throat once you slump against the wall and remain motionless. It would be easier to transport you this way, as much as he would have liked to simply fling you over his shoulder bring you along like he had back at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center.
You were far less trusting than you used to be after what he’d just done to you. Understandably so, but he still needed what he’d hidden in your blood.
Victor had grown quite fond of you over the year he knew you. You were fiery in temper, but kind in heart.
Easy to get along with and manipulate, if need be.
These were among the many things that helped him to decide in making you something of a...back-up plan, should he find the need for one. He often considered you his masterpiece, really.
With what his Master had left behind, the cure that was Elpis, Victor still had to carry on Spencer’s legacy.
And he would. Not all of his work had been destroyed.
Which was where you came in.
Victor would be keeping you around for quite some time.
He stood and turned to the bed, frowning as he saw his beloved pet python curled up with her mouth open and her tongue out. She didn’t survive after biting him, the poor thing. It was as to be expected, unfortunately. The doctor hadn’t modified her the way he’d done with you. She was supposed to have perished in the Care Center’s self-destruction protocol, but you had found and rescued her so she could return the mutated DNA he’d injected into her and help along his healing process.
He’d mutated once already; to the point of no return, one would think.
And yet here Victor Gideon was. Even he didn’t know what had brought him back after Leon defeated him.
But none of that mattered now.
“Sorry, old girl,” Victor mutters as the backs of his fingers tenderly brush along the smooth scales of his python, Iris, for the last time. She’d served more than her original purpose. He was proud of her, and of you for bringing her this far.
His mind back on you for the time being, Victor grabs a blanket from the bed and wraps you up in it before flinging your unconscious form over one shoulder.
While he no longer had any functioning facilities and The Connections funding him, he did know of some of his Master’s old hide-outs that were still around. He could start things from there, even though he would have to steal some equipment to properly extract what he needed from your body.
Victor caresses your back thoughtfully through the sheet cocooning your limp body as he suddenly recalls the sounds of your broken moans. He feels himself twitch within his pants at this and hums, storing that delightful little information-filled memory away for use at a...later date.
There was much to do, so that could wait.